Will each home get a kilo of gold if Hyderabad’s name changes?” K Chandrashekhar Rao asked in a recent India Today TV interview. Telangana’s caretaker chief minister dismissed the idea — renaming the state capital Bhagyanagar — as “stupidity”.
But Yogi Adityanath, the man who made the suggestion, now has a fresh proposal.
Yesterday, the Uttar Pradesh chief minister told Telangana voters his party, the BJP, would work towards renaming Karimnagar “Karipuram” and respect their sentiments if it came to power in tomorrow’s election. And he repeated his earlier pledge about Hyderabad’s rechristening.
“This is what is vote bank politics,” Chandrashekhar Rao told India Today in an interview broadcast on Monday, referring to Adityanath’s remarks on Hyderabad. “They want to play with Hindu vote bank politics. And they blame others.”
Adityanath spoke at rallies in Karimnagar and Nizamabad districts yesterday. He brought up his own government’s work in Uttar Pradesh: “We have renamed Faizabad as Ayodhya and Allahabad as Prayagraj.”
The decision to rename Faizabad district, home to the city believed by millions to be the birthplace of the Hindu deity Ram, was announced last month. Allahabad was once known as Prayag; the Mughal emperor Akbar named it Illahabas, meaning “abode of God”, in 1575. The state cabinet approved the latest name change in October.